TOP STORY
Ottawa Keeps Folding on Digital Taxes. The Tariff Clock on Building Materials Keeps Ticking.
Canada’s decade-long campaign to squeeze money from Big Tech is officially dead — and the way it died matters for construction. As Peter Menzies details in The Hub, the Carney government has abandoned the CRTC’s plan to make Netflix, Spotify and Disney pay 15% of Canadian revenues into content funds, replacing an estimated $200 million in streamer contributions with $600 million from taxpayers — and the PM is now weighing a Meta proposal that could dissolve the Online News Act entirely. The Digital Services Tax went the same way last year. Each retreat came after pressure from the US Trade Representative, whatever Ottawa says publicly. Here’s the question for our industry: if digital taxes were expendable to keep trade talks alive, what is Ottawa putting on the table before Washington’s 50% tariffs on lumber, plywood, cement, paint and doors land August 19?
THE NUMBERS — STATISTICS CANADA
Sawmills, May 2026 — Released today, and grim reading for BC’s forestry towns. Lumber production fell 3.1% from April to 3.87 million cubic metres — down 6.8% from a year earlier. Shipments were off 9.9% year-over-year. The industry is shrinking before the new tariffs even take effect — a reminder that curtailments, mill closures and fibre-supply problems were bleeding the sector well ahead of Washington’s latest move. Statistics Canada
WORTH WATCHING
July Jobs Numbers, Tomorrow Morning — The Labour Force Survey lands at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. RBC pegs a modest 5,000-job gain with unemployment steady at 6.5%. Watch construction employment in BC and Alberta — payrolls have barely moved in a year despite all the megaproject talk. Canadian Mortgage Professional
Softwood Duties Set to Drop — One bright spot in the trade file: the US Commerce Department is expected to cut combined antidumping and countervailing duties on Canadian softwood from roughly 35% to 25% in mid-August. Cold comfort if the August 19 tariff lists stand, but real money for BC producers if both moves net out. HousingWire
Bank of Canada, September 2 — Tomorrow’s jobs print is the last major labour data before the BoC’s next decision. A soft number strengthens the case for a cut from 2.25% — relief highly leveraged builders and developers need. Bank of Canada
IN BRIEF
The Hub — The top 20% of Canadians now pay 65% of income taxes. That bargain is breaking — The Hub’s editorial board lays out the arithmetic: families earning above $270,472 pay 65.3% of personal income taxes while earning 49.5% of income, nearly half of adult filers pay no income tax at all, and more than 150,000 Canadians left the country in the last five quarters — the highest outflow since records began in 1952. That “top 20%” isn’t hedge funds — it’s contractors, tradespeople-turned-owners and the small businesses that build this country. Their prescription: broad-based tax reform on the scale of the Carter Commission, with BC’s early-2000s across-the-board cuts as the template.